The Story of Twister, the Game Called 'Sex in a Box'

The Definitive Guide to Public Relations Coups—if there were such a book—would surely record a groundbreaking event in 1966. That spring, a publicist from Milton Bradley placed a call to NBC and got a new game called Twister onto The Tonight Show. The episode aired the evening of May 3. With Ed McMahon and fashion designer Oleg Cassini looking on, Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor took off their shoes, looked down at a plastic mat of green, yellow, blue and red dots, then followed the instructions. “The referee spins the spinner, then calls out the body part and color. Each player must try to place the called-out body part on a vacant circle of the called-out color.” Within minutes, the dapper host and the Hungarian coquette (in a décolleté, no less) were in a knot on the floor. The studio audience went wild—as 12 million Americans watching TV at home took it all in. By the following morning, Twister was a national phenomenon. And it still is. Now believed to have been played by more than 65 million people, the Hasbro game has popped up everywhere from an episode of Friends to R.E.M.’s 1992 hit Man on the Moon to Billie Eilish's Lost Cause video last year. The National Toy Hall of Fame even inducted Twister in 2015. But all of it came close to never happening. In 1964, Reyn Guyer, whose father ran what Guyer called a “cheap gift” company, was trying to think up a promotion for Johnson Wax’s shoe polish. “He first had the idea for a game that uses people as the playing pieces and a mat on the floor as the game board,” Hasbro Gaming svp and general manager Adam Biehl told Adweek. “The first attempt at this game was called King's Footsie. He pitched the game to 3M, where it was rejected.” So Guyer hired game developers Charles Foley and Neil Rabens, who formalized Twister as we know it now. Milton Bradley bought the game but hit a wall. Even for the swinging ’60s, Twister was considered too risqué. As Guyer later related in his book Right Brain Red, “The idea of being that close to someone—especially someone of the opposite sex—was socially unacceptable.” A company sales rep groused that Twister was simply “sex in a box.” That gay men would themselves one day indulge in games of “strip Twister” was impossible to even contemplate at the time. When Sears refused to put the game in its holiday catalog, the cause was seemingly lost. But that’s when the anonymous publicist placed that fateful call to NBC Studios in Burbank, Calif., making a twisted bit of history. Funny business On an episode of Bachelor Pad, contestants faced their first challenge: a game of Twister. While Hasbro (which bought Milton Bradley in 1984) positions Twister as family-friendly, there’s always been an unspoken understanding that Twister can lend itself to decidedly non-family activities. Some proof might be found in the fact that Milton Bradley once included a booklet of Seagram’s 7 drink recipes with every box. (And the wet and wanton Twister game on ABC's The Bachelor, shown here, didn't even require liquor as a lubricant.) Even in the early days—and despite its insistence that Twister was a kids' game—Milton Bradley officials could see that college students were Twister’s most ardent fans. “We had a run of stories about teens throwing parties where they’d play Twister in the nude,” the late Mel Taft, MB’s research and development chief, told The Guardian in 2014. “I thought that was going to harm us. It didn’t.” Believe it or knot If it hadn't been for Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor playing Twister on The Tonight Show in 1966 (1) Twister—whose patent (2) specified that people would be the game pieces—would never have made store shelves. The game's three inventors, including Charles Foley and Neil Rabens (3, l. and r.), sold Twister to Milton Bradley, which showed adults on the original box (4) because it feared inappropriate behavior it might lead to in younger players. But while young people did take to Twister—like the party crowd in this Billie Eilish video (5)—it's been a hit with all age groups. Maybe that's the reason for the nebulous players shown on today's box (6).

Perspective

How Johnny Carson Helped Twister Wrangle Its Way Into America's Homes

The funny—and occasionally naughty—floor game was once referred to as 'sex in a box'

Robert Klara

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Robert Klara